Foywonder

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE BLACK CHRISTMAS

When I started doing Foyeurisms I always had something of a preamble before getting into the meat of the monthly article. Ever since I started the blog I found myself with less and less to say at the outset because stuff I would have posted up top in this space was getting printed on the blog instead. For a few months now I often found myself at a loss as to what to post up here. Sometimes just bs'ing my way through a paragraph or two being harder to write than the Foyeurism itself. Since I've been threatening to upload more videos to YouTube showcasing some obscurities from my video collection I'm thinking about using this space for that. Sounds like a plan. We'll see next month.

As for this month, how does a triple dosage of psycho babble sound?

SORORITY ROW is a remake of a 1982 slasher movie that I have never actually seen and hardcore horror fans everywhere reacted to news of the remake with "What? They're going to remake what? Why?" Not so much because they were outraged; more so in that even most of them had never seen THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW. Not exactly a classic of the slasher genre here. Don't know why they dropped "THE HOUSE ON" part of the title. Should have just titled it I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SEMESTER.

A college prank played on a Theta Pi's cheating boyfriend goes horribly wrong. They trick him into thinking he killed his girlfriend Megan with an overdose of roofies and head out to an abandoned mine or something to dump the body. Another Theta Pi is a med student and mentions something about air in a corpse's lungs causing the body to float - no mention of Megan's breast implants also potentially adding to her buoyancy. The boyfriend panics and fatally stabs Megan in the chest with a four-pronged tire iron to let the air out, which you'd think would have required a Jason Voorhees degree of superhuman strength since this was a contraption used for unscrewing lug nuts and not exactly a jagged blade. Megan goes from playing dead to being dead and the other Theta Pi gals go from pretending to dump her dead body to actually dumping her dead body.

Flash forward to graduation time eight months later. FYI: two of the Theta Pis still have on the exact same nail polish eight months later. Megan's disappearance remains an enduring mystery. Then the ladies involved get picture messages on their phones of the murder weapon and cryptic messages that seem to indicate Megan is alive and coming back for revenge. The girls all believe it's a sick joke being played on them by the boyfriend, now a total head case since that fateful night.

Imagine a slasher movie where nearly every female character is an unlikable "My Super Sweet Sixteen" spoiled bitch-on-wheels you wish someone would come along and kill yet we are expected to feel scared for these mean girls when the killer goes after them. That's SORORITY ROW.

The first two-thirds of SORORITY ROW do indeed play out like an even more mediocre retreading of the already mediocre I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. The third act then gives you the distinct feeling that everyone involved on the creative side realized what hogwash that first hour was and decided late into the game to camp things up and inject some HEATHERS-ish satire into the mix. All they succeed in doing is turning by-the-numbers slasher rubbish into unintentionally ridiculous slasher malarky. It totally backfires, though not quite entertainingly enough to redeem the lameness of hour one.

A prime example of this is when house mother Carrie Fisher (or at least the woman that ate Carrie Fisher) returns to the sorority house packing a loaded shotgun. Why? It comes in handy when she goes Annie Oakley after the killer but she didn't even know there was a killer when she got there. She was just coming back to survey the sorority house after the unchaperoned graduation party ended. With a fully loaded Linda Hamilton/T2 shotgun? Who was she planning to shoot? Was she going to shoo everyone out of the party with a hail of gunfire? Not one single character even asks her what the shotgun is for.

Whether it be the mask they hide behind or their mode of dress concealing their true identity or some sort of gimmicked weapon or the catch phrases they leave behind as a calling card or just the fancy finishing moves they use to kill their victims, movie slashers are like professional wrestlers - they all have to have a theme or gimmick of some sort to get over their personality. Killing is their sport and they are the ultimate psychopathic sports entertainers. The SORORITY ROW slasher wields one of silliest instruments of death of any slasher in recent memory, so silly it nearly salvages this junk.

First of all, the killer dresses in a long hooded black robe. Either because it's a fraternity initiation thing or the killer is a Dementer that got lost on the way to Hogwarts and just decided to start tormenting a sorority full of CW Network quality cast-offs. Kind of lame costuming.

But his weapon - oh my. The slasher has fashioned a four-pronged tire iron pimped out with survival knives and spear heads. A marvel of Ron Popeil gone mad engineering; this weapon can also fold up and fit inside the killer's pocket for extra added convenience. Aerodynamic to boot; the killer sometimes throws it like a giant ninja star. I want one. Would come in handy if I ever had to kill a bear for food while changing a tire in a national park.

Any of you whippersnappers remember the movie KRULL? If you watch SORORITY ROW and pretend the slasher is actually running around killing people with the weapon the hero used in KRULL the movie becomes a thousand times funnier. That's what this killer's weapon is - a Swiss Army Glaive.

"Hi! I'm Billy Mays! Ever found yourself broken down in a national park trying to change a tire while fighting off hungry bears? Now with my amazing new Swiss Army Glaive you can fix a flat, fight off a grizzly, and gut it for food. And thanks to space saving technology, it can fold up in your pocket Call now!"

Briana "Master of the Sweaty Belly Shirt" Evigan is the defacto heroine (i.e. the least hateful and slutty of the Theta Pi sisters). Evigan's character only inherits the heroine role because the other girls blackmail her to keep her quiet and we're told she's done a ton of charity work since the death. She's dating the valedictorian and hoping to start a happy new life with him, though still haunted by Megan's untimely demise and her guilty conscience. The boyfriend knows something is eating away at her but cannot get her to tell him the truth.

Now I know Briana Evigan's father is actor Greg Evigan but can we confirm that her mother is not in fact original Charlie's Angel Kate Jackson. Briana Evigan in this movie is such a dead ringer for a young Kate Jackson it's startling.

Speaking of celebrity offspring, Rumer Willis... One look at the girl's jaw I seriously have to wonder whether or not Bruce Willis is actually her biological father. Are we sure Demi Moore never had an affair with Robert Z'Dar?

Rumer Willis is the other sorta good Theta Pi. An emotional basket case ever since, 90% of her scenes have her whimpering uncontrollably or letting out ear-splitting screaming fits. She'll witness a kill; when she tries to tell her sisters what she saw all she can do is stammer like Scooby and Shaggy after seeing a ghost. During the finale, as the killer stalks them and the entire sorority house is burning down to the ground, instead of trying to escape, this allegedly brilliant med student will attempt to hide in a closet. Yet she will survive the movie, too, even playing a key role in the downfall of the killer. Yeah, wonderful. The girl with the odd face who stammers like Beaker from The Muppets lives and helps save the day but the hot Asian girl that can't think up enough ways to get wet gets force fed a flare gun. Life is not fair.

I couldn't decide which caption to go with so you get both:
"Oh, yes, we most definitely need more Calgon!"
"I wouldn't mind wanging her chung."

That would be Jamie Chung as the cleanliest slasher movie victim I've ever seen. She gets out of a bubble bath jacuzzi and immediately feels the need to go clean herself off with a hot shower. Her demise even comes amid a pile of soap suds. The killer overflows the bubble bath jacuzzi so that there's about four-foot of suds filling the patio; Chung goes in search of the off-switch and you'd swear it looks like Jaws was lurking amid the bubbles they way she gets sucked down into the suds to her death.

Then there's the girl known only as Chugs. Mental anguish over covering up Megan's death has led her to become a drunken slut - even more so than she was before. Her death will combine her two favorite past times when the killer forces her to fatally deep throat a wine bottle.

I'd almost consider it sublime commentary on the part of the screenwriters that most of the slutty sorority female victims die by some means of fatal deep throating: wine bottle down the throat, flare gun fired in the mouth, and two fatal mouth stabbings with the Swiss Army Glaive. I would, but all one has to do is watch the absurd turns the film makes to realize there was little going on her that could be considered clever.

Lindsay Lohan was a surprise contestant on America's Got Talent the other night.

The queen bee of the Theta Pi hive is Jessica, a social-climbing blonde dating the son of a prominent Senator with White House prospects. Think Blair Warner from "The Facts of Life" if she were a sociopathic bitch. Better yet, pretend she's Rachel McAdams in MEAN GIRLS having moved on to college and upgraded her personality from mean to amoral.

Megan's teenage sister is then introduced, arriving just in time for the big party to announce her intention to pledge Theta Pi the next year and act as weird as possible to make you think she might be the killer. Megan was played by Audrina Partridge of "The Hills", she of the smoking hot body and odd-shaped eyes that seem to be constantly staring at the ceiling. In casting the role of her kid sister they needed an actress with facial features vaguely similar to Partridge and they came up with this girl that looks like Danica McKellar but younger, tanner, and with near Down Syndrome eyes. Maggie reveals her true intentions the night of the party. No. She isn't the killer. She has no idea what actually happened to her older sister but Megan did tell her how much she hated the blonde bitch so she has crashed the graduation party with the sole purpose of making Jessica's life a living hell, preferably by sleeping with her boyfriend.

When Maggie finds out her sister is dead and Jessica was involved and helped cover it up, she'll react with a Keanu-like "Whoa!" and then goes skulking about the house in her bra & panties calling out her Megan's name just in case the person in the cloak brutally murdering people happens to be her not dead sister. When she got a Molotov cocktail thrown at her (it misses) and is show running across the screen screaming past the flaming backdrop with her arms up in the air, I laughed and I laughed and I laughed.

They find Jessica's boyfriend lurking about in a black robe. Is he the killer or is he wearing the robe to cover up his lack of clothes from having just boinked Maggie in Jessica's own bed? Either way, he goes psycho and tries beating them up. Jessica and Briana are locked inside the bathroom where Megan's corpse is hung in the show while the Senator's son is smashing the door down like THE SHINING. Only thing missing is an axe and a "Here's Johnnny!" This is the killer? Seriously? All these murders is because his girlfriend's lies, her being involved in the cover-up of an accidental homicide, might come out someday and adversely affect his father's political aspirations? Are we really expected to believe this?

He starts beating up the blonde and then he's strangling Briana Evigan. Bam! Impaled through the skull by Briana's boyfriend. He's come to save his woman. Hooray! The day has been saved by this guy who we have only seen four times previously: giving the valedictory address, getting kissy face with Briana after the ceremony, talking to her on the phone before the party asking her what's wrong, and showing up at the party just in time for the trouble to begin so Briana can beg him to leave.

The Senator's son - he just picked the most convinient moment possible to go stark-raving bonkers. But Briana's boyfriend, the class valedictorian with only four brief scenes, the least developed character in the film (with the exception of the nameless girl in the Theta Pi shower that overhears Jessica talking about covering up Megan's death and is then promptly killed by the slasher, which in retrospect makes zero sense unless the killer also had the magical powers to teleport into the house from his previous location), and has no logical reason to be a serial killer and has given off no tell-tale hints that he might deep down be a homicidal maniac, he has the Swiss Army Glaive in his pocket.

He killed them all because he loves Briana, would do anything to protect her, and having learned of her dark secret knew they could never have a normal life together as long as this secret persists; what better way to clean the slate than to kill everyone involved and anyone else that knows and, while he's at it, anyone else that gets in the way as well? Nothing like a little mass murder to get your life off to a fresh start.

Sooooooo... We can't move forward until this secret is taken care of. Okay. Now what about the new deep dark secret that you brutally slaughtered over a half-dozen people to make sure the other deep dark secret never came out? That strikes me as an even bigger secret that could adversely affect your future. Makes perfect sense. It's like that time my sister accidentally ran over a homeless man and I decided the best way to cover her tracks was to head out on the highway one night and play DEATH RACE 2000 with every hitchhiker I saw. Who's going to care about a random bum killed in a hit & run when there's a freeway maniac on the loose leaving behind a bloody path of human roadkill? Vulcan logic.

WHITEOUT is the absolute worst remake of THE THING I've ever seen. They didn't even bother to include a thing in it. Oh, sure, we get scientists at an Antarctic outpost and the deaths of everyone at another research outpost being discovered, which in turn leads to the killer getting loose at their outpost, but what's killing them is just some dude in a coat. No alien, talk of meteorites that lead to nothing extraterrestrial; the UFO has been replaced by a long lost Cold War era Russian transport plane buried in the snow, but instead of discovering an alien creature aboard that wrecked vessel, what is found on board just causes several characters to go all Antarctic TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE on each other. Worst THING remake ever!

Previews tried to play up the film as horror movie along the lines of THE THING. In actuality, WHITEOUT is more like an extra long uninteresting episode of CSI: Antarctica. Primarily a murder mystery set against the backdrop of endless ice and snow, the biggest mystery being how I managed to stay awake through the whole affair. WHITEOUT would make a perfect companion piece to X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE. Both are excessively talky, duller-than-dirt, murder investigation movies set against the backdrop of inordinate amounts of snowy terrain. WHITEOUT was directed by Dominic Sena, director of THE FAST & THE FURIOUS. If ever there were two words in the English language that could never be used to describe WHITEOUT it would be "fast" and "furious".

The first five minutes of WHITEOUT treat us to Russians aboard a plane getting into a gunfight for reasons unknown, that plane crashing into a snow bank, full frontal naked male streakers, Kate Beckinsale stripping down to her underwear and taking a steamy shower, and then Beckinsale engaging in a scintillating discussion with old friend and research facility doctor Tom Skerritt that keeps harkening back to their mutual love for Ramen noodles. I'm reminded of that old screenwriting adage about how the first ten pages of a screenplay needing to hook the reader - yet WHITEOUT still got greenlit.

WHITEOUT is based on a rather well-received graphic novel from a decade ago I have never read and after seeing this movie don't have any plans to do so. That four different screenwriters are credited with the screenplay speaks volumes as to how things went so wrong. The dialogue is already written and the very look of the potential film version is already storyboarded for you; why was it so hard to adapt this particular comic book miniseries?

Kate Beckinsale is a US Marshall sent to an Antarctic outpost because... Beats me. From the looks of things, the people at this research facility tend to behave like a college fraternity and throw a Hawaiian-themed kegger every 48-hours, so maybe she has just been sent in to chaperone.

Her character is a gun-shy ninny haunted by a series of flashbacks shot with that same annoying gold tinting that made THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS the mega hit it was. She doesn't trust her judgment because her ex-partner tried to set her up to be killed and she didn't see it coming. It appears her character's story arc is that she goes from wanting to quit her job because she misread someone she trusted that almost led to her being killed to wanting to keep her job after again misreading someone she trusted that also nearly led to her being killed. Four screenwriters, eh?

The killer looks to be Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe dressed up as the slasher from the first URBAN LEGEND flick. When the killer is finally tied up and the mask comes off, much to my great disappointment it did not turn out to be old man Smithers, owner of the haunted Antarctic amusement park. No. Instead it just turns out to be some Australian guy. When the killer is revealed you're like, "Oh! It's that guy... (long pause) Who the hell is that guy?"

But you just know that guy cannot be the only killer because we really don't know who the hell that guy is and Tom Skerritt is still alive. One of the basic tenets of cinema is that if you have a murder thriller like this co-starring Tom Skerritt and he is not killed prior to the full revelation of the killer's identity, Tom Skerritt must either be the killer or be in cahoots with the killer. It really is one of the basic laws of modern cinema. The Skerritt Murder Principle: look it up. I believe Syd Field wrote a whole book on it.

Tom Skerritt is indeed partnering with the psycho Australian but he's on the remorseful side of the murder spectrum. Just another old timer whose mundane existence led him to give into his greed; that greed got out of hand and led to murders being committed and Kate Beckinsale losing two fingers on her left hand. I think he may have been more guilt ridden over her losing those two fingers than he was about the multiple homicides committed. The two of them have this past history; that means she's willing to just stand aside and watch as he commits suicide by walking out into the subzero weather to look at the aurora borealis one last time. One hundred tedious minutes of investigation just so it could all lead to a frostbitten POINT BREAK rip-off of a climax.

The film's title only comes to pass during a climactic showdown with the Australian killer. A whiteout is described as a severe snowstorm with 100 mile-per-hour winds that kick up so much snow you can't even see six inches in front of your face. Those weather conditions recreated on film in an action sequence involving three characters all clad in identical hooded winter coats; try to imagine how watching such an action sequence play out might prove problematic to the viewer.

OBSESSED is the ultimate revenge fantasy thriller for every African-American woman sick of seeing white women taking their finest Nubian men. A crazy white woman is trying to seduce and ruin the marriage of a successful, happily married black family man, and only his sassy, no-nonsense ebony goddess of a wife can put a stop to this home-wrecking honkette. I originally saw OBSESSED when it opened in theaters, and when it was over there was a smattering of applause, and you better believe everyone clapping looked like Oprah. Can't say this movie doesn't know whom it's catering to.

Or how about calling it TYLER PERRY'S FATAL ATTRACTION since there's so much talk about the importance of a stable black family and every white person is in some way a detriment to the black man.

Speaking of which, never hire Scout Taylor-Compton as your babysitter; not only is she terrible at her job, the girl is a psycho magnet.

OBSESSED makes for a very bad urban thriller, the script playing like it started out as a made-for-DVD sequel to that Lara Flynn Boyle psycho secretary movie THE TEMP that got rewritten to include less murderousness (one dead body in the whole film and you better believe it belongs to a skinny white blonde) and more questionable racial dynamics. Honestly, reverse the races and ask yourself if this movie would ever get made today.

But as an unintentional comedy it can be quite amusing if you're in the mood for such. Just hearing Idris Elba yell “Breathe, bitch!” while performing CPR on Ali Larter after she intentionally overdoses in his bed makes it worth watching. Only the bloated 108-minute running time and the PG-13 rating truly prevent it from fully achieving its destiny as trash cinema gold. Too much Lifetime Network melodrama, catfighting women with barely any profanities hurled, a lack of dead bodies (Jerry O'Connell does not get killed - boo!), a chandelier impaling that lacks an impaling, and no nudity even during scenes that practically beg for it. Ali Larter drugs and appears to rape Idris Elba, but she doesn't get naked and the next morning he wakes up fully clothed as well, so what exactly did she do to him? It's next to impossible to recommend this movie, but I can't be a total hater because portions of it entertained me for all the wrong reasons.

Perhaps you haven't heard about the governments new "Ho's for Volvo's"" program

Derek Charles ("The Wire"'s Idris Elba, the only actor escaping this nonsense with any dignity still intact) is an executive vice president at a Fortune 500 company in Los Angeles with the most successful modern black family life since the Huxtables. He, his wife Sharon, and his baby have just moved into a fancy new two-story home, as seen during the opening credits when they're shown strolling through their new house celebrating their life together.

In one of the most obvious moments of foreshadowing I have ever seen, they walk into the attic and discover a soft spot one could fall through and then back out of the room. Believe me, you don't want to fall through that spot because if you do it's a surprisingly long straight shot to the very large glass table they've conveniently placed right underneath that area, and the only thing that might save you is grabbing hold of the giant chandelier assuming it's strong enough to support the weight of a shapely blonde clad only in a throwback jersey. The inexplicably vast spatial dimensions of the interior of this two-story house lead me to conclude Dr. Who was their architect.

Now we know Derek is a happily married man because he's constantly telling us he's happily married. Co-worker Jerry O'Connell has tickets to the Lakers game and tells Derek to lie to his wife about having to work late so they can go: "No. My wife would kill me. I love my wife. Don't want to ruin my marriage." Later O'Connell suggests they go get some lap dances: "I'm married now. I love my wife. I'd never do anything to hurt her." He tries to avoid drinking alcohol, is constantly slipping off to call his wife, still sends her roses every Monday, and constantly reminds us that he's happily married, loves his wife and child, and would never do anything to hurt them. You could ask this guy what time it is or if he has change for a dollar, and he'd probably reject your request with a line about how much he loves his wife and baby and would never do anything to hurt them. You can make a drinking game out of it.

All is well in the pussywhipped life of Derek Charles until the day the white she-devil arrives, Lisa Sheridan ("Heroes"' Ali Larter, vamping it up like a Susan Lucci disciple), an office temp who puts the temp in temptress and is highly efficient at her job - extreme efficiency is a surefire sign of evil in movies such as this. Derek's the first person that she meets, and Lisa immediately sets her sights on him. O'Connell even tells him early on about how a lot of gals like her "view the office as hunting grounds for single successful men and I think she just put you in the crosshairs", cocking his finger at Derek like a gun, which the director shoots in the most ominous manner possible with threatening music and everything.

Derek may flirt with her a little, but he has no intention of getting involved with Lisa because, after all, he loves his wife and baby and would never do anything to hurt them. Then Lisa attempts to jump his bones in the men's room stall at the office's "No Spouses Allowed" Christmas party, followed by a half-naked seduction in his car. Lisa quits her temp gig to devote herself full-time to stalking Derek. There is no explanation behind her sudden psychosis other than the age old adage "once you go black you never go back to being sane".

Yet, crazy horny Lisa still seems a better option than the banshee of a wife he claims to love so much. Lisa may be insane, but at least she's not the raging bitch wife Sharon is. Kind of hard to feel completely sorry for Derek because he keeps making the wrong move every step of the way, but it's impossible not to feel for the guy because this wife that he loves so much and would never do anything to hurt won't even give him a chance to explain his side of the story when she finally finds out what's been going on, instantly believing he's been having an affair and kicking him out of the house. "Get out of my house!" she yells at him even though she's a stay-at-home mom and he pays all the bills. The poor bastard barely gets a word in edge-wise and is forced to come crawling back begging for forgiveness even though he never did anything to hurt his wife and baby whom he loves so much. Worst for him, he damn near gets kicked out of the movie.

Beyonce Knowles in her natural state, on the prowl with an insatiable taste for human blood.

OBSESSED is the Beyonce Knowles show from here on out. Imagine FATAL ATTRACTION if two thirds of the way in Michael Douglas got tossed to the sidelines so that Anne Archer could completely dominate the movie. Sharon doesn't need her husband or the cops to help her when it comes time for her to take off her earrings and behave like a pissed-off Jerry Springer guest charging after the woman that's been trying to steal her man. The final shot of the film is a freeze of Sharon and Derek embracing but framed like a bad photograph; Elba's head is cut off from the chin up just to ensure Beyonce's face fills the screen and reminds everyone who the true star of this film was.

Beyonce Knowles really wants to be a major movie star, an Oscar winner even more so. Remember DREAMGIRLS? That was supposed to be her Oscar, not Jennifer Hudson's. OBSESSED will not win her any Oscars, but her Sasha Fierce-ly bad performance might win her a Razzie. Just try not laughing at her when she undergoes her metamorphosis during the finale into a street-talkin' hood rat living out the ultimate black woman's fantasy of beating the crap out of a skinny blonde white chick: dragging Ali Larter by her hair while yelling "I'm gonna drag your skinny white ass all over my floor!" or punching the white she-devil in her face and declaring "This is for my husband!" before punching her again and screeching "This is for touching my child!"

But then what would you expect from an urban thriller whose original working title was...